Prayers and Blessings
The Hebrew word for prayer is tefilah. It is derived from the root Peh-Lamed-Lamed and the word l'hitpalel, meaning to judge oneself. This surprising
word origin provides insight into the purpose of Jewish prayer. The
most important part of any Jewish prayer, whether it be a prayer of
petition, of thanksgiving, of praise of G-d,
or of confession, is the introspection it provides, the moment that
we spend looking inside ourselves, seeing our role in the universe and
our relationship to G-d.
The Yiddish word meaning "pray" is
"daven," which ultimately comes from the same Latin
root as the English word "divine" and emphasizes the One to
whom prayer is directed.
For an observant Jew, prayer is not simply
something that happens in synagogue once a week (or even three times
a day). Prayer an integral part of everyday life. In fact, one of the
most important prayers in Judaism, the Birkat Ha-Mazon,
is never recited in synagogue!
Observant Jews are constantly reminded of G-d'-s
presence and of our relationship with G-d, because we are continually
praying to Him. Our first thought in the morning, even before we get
out of bed, is a prayer thanking G-d for returning our souls to us.
There are prayers to be recited before enjoying any material
pleasure, such as eating or wearing new clothes; prayers to recite
before performing any mitzvah (commandment), such as washing
hands or lighting candles; prayers to recite upon seeing anything
unusual, such as a king, a rainbow, or the site of a great tragedy;
prayers to recite whenever some good or bad thing happens; and
prayers to recite before going to bed at night. All of these prayers
are in addition to formal prayer services, which are performed three
times a day every weekday and additional times on sabbaths and festivals. See Jewish
Liturgy.
Many people today do not see the need for regular,
formal prayer. "I pray when I feel inspired to, when it is
meaningful to me," they say. This attitude overlooks two
important things: the purpose of prayer, and the need for practice.
One purpose of prayer is to increase your
awareness of G-d in your life and the
role that G-d plays in your life. If you only pray when you feel
inspired (that is, when you are already aware of G-d), then you will
not increase your awareness of G-d.
In addition, if you want to do something well, you
have to practice it continually, even when you don't feel like doing
it. This is as true of prayer as it is of playing a sport, playing a
musical instrument, or writing. The sense of humility and awe of G-d
that is essential to proper prayer does not come easily to modern
man, and will not simply come to you when you feel the need to pray.
If you wait until inspiration strikes, you will not have the skills
you need to pray effectively. Before I started praying regularly, I
found that when I wanted to pray, I didn't know how. I didn't know
what to say, or how to say it, or how to establish the proper frame
of mind. If you pray regularly, you will learn how to express
yourself in prayer.
When you say the same prayers day after day, you
might expect that the prayers would become routine and would begin to
lose meaning. While this may be true for some people, this is not the
intention of Jewish prayer. As I said at the beginning of this
discussion, the most important part of prayer is the introspection it
provides. Accordingly, the proper frame of mind is vital to prayer.
The mindset for prayer is referred to as kavanah,
which is generally translated as "concentration" or
"intent." The minimum level of kavanah is an awareness that
one is speaking to G-d and an
intention to fulfill the obligation to pray. If you do not have this
minimal level of kavanah, then you are not praying; you are
merely reading. In addition, it is preferred that you have a mind
free from other thoughts, that you know and understand what you are
praying about and that you think about the meaning of the prayer.
Liturgical melodies are often used as an aid to
forming the proper mindset. Many prayers and prayer services have
traditional melodies associated with them. These can increase your
focus on what you are doing and block out extraneous thoughts.
I also find it useful to move while praying.
Traditional Jews routinely sway back and forth during prayer,
apparently a reference to Psalm 35, which says "All my limbs
shall declare, 'O L-rd, who is like You?'" Such movement is not
required, and many people find it distracting, but I personally find
that it helps me concentrate and focus.
The Talmud states that it is permissible to pray
in any language that you can understand; however, traditional Judaism
has always stressed the importance of praying in Hebrew. A
traditional Chasidic story speaks glowingly of the prayer of an
uneducated Jew who wanted to pray but did not speak Hebrew. The man
began to recite the only Hebrew he knew: the alphabet.
He recited it over and over again, until a rabbi asked what he was
doing. The man told the rabbi, "The Holy One, Blessed is He,
knows what is in my heart. I will give Him the letters, and He can
put the words together."
Even liberal Judaism is increasingly recognizing
the value of Hebrew. My grandmother tells me that fifty years ago,
you never heard a word of Hebrew in a Reform synagogue. Today, the
standard Reform prayerbook contains the text of many prayers in
Hebrew, and many of the standard prayers are recited in Hebrew,
generally followed by transliteration and an English translation. I have heard several Reform rabbis read
from the Torah in Hebrew, also generally followed by an English
translation or explanation.
There are many good reasons for praying in Hebrew:
it gives you an incentive for learning Hebrew, which might otherwise
be forgotten; it provides a link to Jews all over the world; it is
the language in which the covenant with G-d was formed, etc. To me, however, the most important reason to pray in
Hebrew is that Hebrew is the language of Jewish thought.
Any language other than Hebrew is laden down with
the connotations of that language's culture and religion. When you
translate a Hebrew word, you lose subtle shadings of Jewish ideas and
add ideas that are foreign to Judaism. Only in Hebrew can the pure
essence of Jewish thought be preserved and properly understood. For
example, the English word "commandment" connotes an order
imposed upon us by a stern and punishing G-d, while the Hebrew word
"mitzvah" implies an honor and privilege given to
us, a responsibility that we undertook as part of the covenant we
made with G-d, a good deed that we are eager to perform.
This is not to suggest that praying in Hebrew is
more important than understanding what you are praying about. If you
are in synagogue and you don't know Hebrew well enough, you can
listen to the Hebrew while looking at the translation. If you are
reciting a prayer or blessing alone, you should get a general idea of
its meaning from the translation before attempting to recite it in
Hebrew. But even if you do not fully understand Hebrew at this time,
you should try to hear the prayer, experience the prayer, in Hebrew.
Most of our prayers are expressed in the first
person plural, "us" instead of "me," and are
recited on behalf of all of the Jewish people. This form of prayer
emphasizes our responsibility for one another and our interlinked
fates.
In Judaism, prayer is largely a group activity
rather than an individual activity. Although it is permissible to
pray alone and it fulfills the obligation to pray, you should
generally make every effort to pray with a group, short of violating
a commandment to do so.
A complete formal prayer service cannot be
conducted without a quorum of at least 10 adult Jewish men; that is,
at least 10 people who are obligated to fulfill the commandment to
recite the prayers. This prayer quorum is referred to as a minyan (from a Hebrew root meaning to count or to number). Certain prayers
and religious activities cannot be performed without a minyan.
This need for a minyan has often helped to keep the Jewish
community together in isolated areas.
A berakhah (blessing) is a special kind of
prayer that is very common in Judaism. Berakhot are recited
both as part of the synagogue services and as a response or
prerequisite to a wide variety of daily occurrences. Berakhot are easy to recognize: they all start with the word barukh (blessed or praised).
The words barukh and berakhah are both
derived from the Hebrew root Bet-Resh-Kaf, meaning
"knee," and refer to the practice of showing respect by
bending the knee and bowing. There are several places in Jewish
liturgy where this gesture is performed, most of them at a time
when a berakhah is being recited.
According to Jewish tradition, a person should
recite 100 berakhot each day! This is not as difficult as it
sounds. Repeating the Shemoneh Esrei three times a day (as all observant Jews do) covers 57 berakhot all by itself, and there are dozens of everyday occurrences that
require berakhot.
Many English-speaking people find the idea of berakhot very confusing. To them, the word "blessing" seems to imply
that the person saying the blessing is conferring some benefit on the
person he is speaking to. For example, in Catholic tradition, a
person making a confession begins by asking the priest to bless him.
Yet in a berakhah, the person saying the blessing is speaking
to G-d. How can the creation confer a benefit
upon the Creator?
This confusion stems largely from difficulties in
the translation. The Hebrew word "barukh" is not a
verb describing what we do to G-d; it is an adjective describing G-d
as the source of all blessings. When we recite a berakhah, we
are not blessing G-d; we are expressing wonder at how blessed G-d is.
There are basically three types of berakhot:
ones recited before enjoying a material pleasure (birkhot ha-na'ah),
ones recited before performing a mitzvah (commandment) (birkhot
ha-mitzvot) and ones recited at special times and events (birkhot
hoda'ah).
Berakhot recited before enjoying a material
pleasure, such as eating, drinking or wearing new clothes,
acknowledge G-d as the creator of the
thing that we are about to use. The berakhah for bread praises
G-d as the one "who brings forth bread from the earth." The
berakhah for wearing new clothing praises G-d as the one "who
clothes the naked." By reciting these berakhot, we
recognize that G-d is the Creator of all things, and that we have no
right to use things without first asking his permission. The berakhah essentially asks permission to use the thing.
Berakhot recited before performing a mitzvah (commandment), such as washing hands or lighting candles, praise G-d
as the one "who sanctified us with his commandments and
commanded us..." to do whatever it is we are about to do.
Reciting such a blessing is an essential element of the performance
of a mitzvah. In Jewish tradition, a person who performs a mitzvah with a sense of obligation is considered more meritorious than a
person who performs the same mitzvah because he feels like it.
Recitation of the berakhah focuses our attention on the fact
that we are performing a religious duty with a sense of obligation.
It is worth noting that we recite such berakhot over both biblical
commandments and rabbinical commandments. In the latter case, the
berakhah can be understood as "who sanctified us with his
commandments and commanded us to obey the rabbis, who commanded us
to..." do whatever it is we are about to do.
Berakhot recited at special times and
events, such as when seeing a rainbow or a king or hearing good or
bad news, acknowledge G-d as the ultimate source of all good and evil
in the universe. It is important to note that such berakhot are recited for both good things and things that appear to us to be
bad. When we see or hear something bad, we praise G-d as "the
true Judge," underscoring the fact that things that appear to be
bad happen for a reason that is ultimately just, even if we in our
limited understanding cannot always see the reason.
Many of the berakhot that we recite today
were composed by Ezra and the Men of the Great Assembly nearly 2500
years ago, and they continue to be recited in the same form.
All berakhot use the phrase "Barukh atah Hashem, Elokaynu, melekh ha-olam,"
Blessed art thou L-rd, our G-d,
King of the Universe. This is sometimes referred to as shem
u'malkut (the name and the sovereignty), the affirmation of G-d
as king.
The use of the word "thou" is worth
discussing: in modern English, many people think of the word
"thou" as being formal and respectful, but in fact the
opposite is true. Thou (like the Hebrew atah) is the informal,
familiar second person pronoun, used for friends and relatives. This
word expresses our close and intimate relationship with G-d.
Immediately after this phrase, the berakhah abruptly shifts into the third person; for example, in the birkhot
ha-mitzvot, the first two phrases are blessed art thou, L-rd our
G-d, King of the Universe, who sanctifies us with his commandments
and commands us... This grammatical faux pas is intentional. The use
of the third person pronoun while speaking to a person in Hebrew is a
way of expressing extreme respect and deference. This shift in
perspective is a deliberately jarring way of expressing the fact that
G-d is simultaneously close to us and yet far above us, intimately
related to us and yet transcendent. This paradox is at the heart of
the Jewish relationship with G-d.
One of the most important prayers in Judaism, one of
the very few that the Bible commands
us to recite, is never recited in synagogue.
That prayer is birkat ha-mazon, grace
after meals.
In Deuteronomy 8:10,
we are commanded that when we eat and are satisfied, we must bless the L-rd, our G-d.
This commandment is fulfilled by reciting the birkat ha-mazon (blessing of the food) after each meal. Reciting birkat ha-mazon is commonly referred to as bentsching, from the Yiddish word
meaning "to bless." Although the word "bentsch"
can refer to the recitation of any berakhah,
it is almost always used to refer to reciting birkat ha-mazon.
The grace after meals is recited in addition to
the various berakhot over food recited before meals.
Birkat ha-mazon actually consists of four
blessings, three of which were composed around the time of Ezra and
the Great Assembly and a fourth which was added after the destruction
of the Temple. These blessings are:
- Birkat Hazan (the blessing for providing food), which
thanks G-d for giving food to the world,
- Birkat Ha-Aretz (the blessing for the land), which
thanks G-d for bringing us forth from the land of Egypt, for
making His covenant with us, and for giving us the land of Israel
as an inheritance,
- Birkat Yerushalayim (the blessing for Jerusalem), which
prays for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the coming of the
messiah; and
- Birkat Ha-Tov v'Ha-Maytiv (the blessing for being good
and doing good), was added after the destruction of the Temple,
although it existed before that time. It emphasizes the goodness
of G-d's work, that G-d is good and does good.
In addition to these four blessings, the full birkat
ha-mazon incorporates some psalms and additional blessings for
various special occasions (holidays, guests, etc.).
Sources: Judaism 101 |